Ditching the Dipshit

Juliet, Naked a film by Jesse Peretz.  With Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd, Ethan Hawke, Azhy Robertson.  ****1/2

There are all kinds of nutcase people on the Internet, pursuing this or that weird obsession (like Buddhism, Books, Movies, Life).  Now and then I’ve stumbled across someone whose Internet presence resembles a weird rabbit hole.[1]  Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) seems to be such a man.  He’s a university professor in a small British town, seems to be teaching something related to television (already, as far as I’m concerned, we’re in the realm of dipshitism.  He actually at one point seems to be passing out study aids so his students can better understand a television series.  Not something I’ve ever needed help with).

But his real obsession is, not just a recording artist, but a single album by a singer named Tucker Crowe, who wrote and sang this album about his break-up with a woman, then disappeared from the face of the earth.  He actually left a concert at the break and never appeared again.  Duncan has a website where he posts videos in which he lectures ad nauseum about this or that aspect of the album.  We have the impression he would be happy to listen to it for the rest of his life.  The scenes of him listening and going into raptures are among the funniest in the movie.  His facial expression reveals him as a colossal dipshit.[2]

Annie (Rose Byrne) is partnered with this weird creature (as my wife often says at a movie, “How can such a vibrant beautiful woman be living with such a dork?” but Annie explains in a voice over that there isn’t much in the way of interesting men where she lives, and she stays in that town because she’s taken over a small historical museum that her father used to run).  The problem isn’t just that he’s obsessed.  I think that would be all right.  The real problem is that he talks endlessly about his obsession; he lectures everyone—Annie included—about how right he is; he’s overbearing in championing this very minor artist.  He’s a mansplainer, and a boor.[3]

Annie—perhaps just to get her boyfriend’s attention, in a neutral forum—begins commenting negatively on his posts, and gets some support from a few others.  Things reach a crescendo when someone sends Duncan the original demo tape for the album, “Juliet, Naked.”  Annie finds the CD morose and whiney and boring.  Duncan—predictably—thinks it’s a consummate work of genius.  One of the people who agrees with Annie gets in touch with her by e-mail, and it turns out to be  . . . Tucker Crowe himself (Ethan Hawke).

I’ve seen Ethan Hawke in a number of movies, but I’ve never liked him as much as in this one.  Tucker Crowe was once a popular singer with a number of groupies—his children are scattered all over the place, and are often surprised to find out they have yet another half brother or sister—but now he’s a scruffy middle-aged man who lives in the garage of his most recent ex-wife (to be fair, it’s a pretty large garage, much larger than where the couple was living in Sorry to Bother You) and devotes his life to hanging out, reading good books, and taking care of his youngest child, Jackson (Azhy Robertson, in an Academy Award worthy performance.  I’m not kidding).  Everything about the way he’s living makes sense once we find out what actually happened at that concert that he left so mysteriously.  But it isn’t until nearly the end of the movie that we make that discovery.

In the meantime, as in the famous Japanese story about the dragon lover who had play dragons all over his house and finally got to meet one, Tucker is coming to London because one of his daughters is having a baby, he brings Jackson with him, and Annie has an opportunity to introduce her boyfriend to, not the legend, but the actual human being, Tucker Crowe.  (The moment of their meeting in in the trailer, if you’d like a peek.  The trailer deletes an expletive.)

This movie isn’t just charming because of the romance that inevitably springs up between Tucker and Annie, or because of the weird paradox of thinking someone as a legend and finding out he’s a flesh and blood human being, with all kinds of problems.  Though virtually every performance in the movie is superb (Annie has a lesbian sister (Lily Brazier) who is constantly seeking new girlfriends, and is hilarious), the movie revolves around the amazing performance of Ethan Hawke, and his relationship with his son.  If he were just another indie rock performer with his head up his ass, this might still be a good movie, but he’s a bewildered middle-aged man who’s trying to lead an honest life and take good care of his son, and that makes it great.  I’m surprised that a movie so dependent on the Internet and e-mails and text messages could work so well.  But it does.

There’s a scene at the hospital after Tucker arrives in London that is a comic absolute masterpiece.  Talk about facing your karma.  And there’s a scene late in the movie where Tucker is asked to perform, and I honestly thought, okay, this is where the movie falls apart.  But it didn’t.  It was as charming as everything else.

Tucker actually is a man who is facing his karma, admitting to the mistakes he made in the past and trying, in some fumbling way, to make them right.  He’s an unlikely candidate, scruffy and living in a garage, but he’s a grown-up.  This is a movie about grown-ups.  Except for that college professor, an adolescent lecturing to adolescents.  It’s their own fault for taking a class about television.

[1] I used to spent hours pursing subjects related to Buddhism and meditation, and came across some good sites.  The most fascinating of the rabbit holes was the one written by a man who calls himself The Wanderling.  Don’t get started on that site unless you’ve got a whole afternoon.  It’s as weird and convoluted as Zen practice itself.

[2] It is a half-startled, half-bemused look.  Very sincere.  As my father once explained, if you could render that expression in words, it would say, “Well I’ll be dipped in shit.”

[3] These two problems seem endemic to being a university professor.  Students sit there listening with their eyes glazed over and mouths agape because they have to.  You face such an audience year after year and begin to think you’re fascinating.